BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) – Three bombs exploded Wednesday within an hour in Baghdad, killing 26 people and injuring 73, police said.

A car bomb exploded on the edge of a busy market in New Baghdad, a mostly Shiite neighborhood on the southeastern side of the city, killing at least 23 people and injuring 58, said Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi, an Interior Ministry official. The 11:30 a.m. blast happened near the district’s traffic police directorate.

Dazed, bloodied victims were rushed to the nearby Kindi Hospital, where staff gingerly cut off the shirt of a screaming child whose face and arms were singed in the blast. Two other children lay on gurneys, one with his legs and wrist wrapped in bandages and another with a swollen eye.

Less than an hour earlier, a device hidden under a car detonated as a police patrol was passing near the downtown Tahrir Square, al-Mohammedawi said. The blast missed the patrol but killed three civilians and injured 15, said police Lt. Ali Mitab.

Residents alerted police to another suspect vehicle in the eastern suburb of Kamaliyah. It exploded as police were clearing the area, causing damage to nearby shops and houses but no casualties, said Maj. Falah al-Mohammedawi, an Interior Ministry official.

The capital has suffered a surge of violence since the Feb. 22 bombing of an important Shiite shrine in the mainly Sunni city of Samarra, which triggered reprisal attacks against Sunnis. At least 68 people were killed Tuesday in bombings and mortar fire against mainly religious targets in the city.